Illumina, Inc. has announced the acquisition of Fluent BioSciences, a developer of advanced single-cell technology. This strategic move, effective immediately, positions Fluent BioSciences as a wholly owned subsidiary of Illumina, Inc.
Steven Barnard, Chief Technology Officer of Illumina, highlighted the significance of this acquisition, stating, “The addition of Fluent BioSciences to Illumina will provide significant and new capabilities to our customers in a key growth area and advances our multiomics growth strategy. Single-cell research opens doors to new areas of discovery, and Fluent’s innovative, accessible, and flexible single-cell method will accelerate our ability to deliver full multiomics solutions for our customers.”
Fluent BioSciences’ technology simplifies single-cell analysis by eliminating the need for complex, costly instrumentation and microfluidic consumables. This approach removes many barriers of current methods, making single-cell analysis more accessible and enabling new experiments at the point of sample collection. Fluent’s latest product, PIPseq™ V, boasts exceptional performance, detecting cell types often missed by existing methods and offering high scalability, capable of processing between 100 cells to 1 million.
Combining Fluent’s unique technology with Illumina’s leading sequencing and informatics solutions, including Partek Flow for single-cell multiomic analysis, will offer customers a comprehensive solution with a single point of support. This integration aims to advance research discovery more quickly and economically.
The Fluent team will join Illumina, and PIPseq V will be integrated into Illumina’s product portfolio. Illumina plans to enhance Fluent’s technology to develop comprehensive end-to-end solutions for single-cell analysis.
Illumina will continue to operate as an open NGS platform, maintaining and supporting its existing single-cell partnerships. “Our goal is to continue to develop the sequencing ecosystem and support the best multiomics solutions like single-cell analysis,” Barnard added. “We want customers to have the flexibility to adopt the tools that best fit their needs.”
The acquisition, finalized on July 9, 2024, was funded with cash on hand.